Archive for March, 2016

Oxford Dictionary of Original Shakespearean Pronunciation

The Oxford University Press has a new video-interview today, on an outstanding new project… “Over ten years, David Crystal has constructed an entire dictionary of Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation — with guidance on how every single word in the First Folio would most likely have been heard by Shakespeare’s audiences.” The book is the new The […]

Photographers’ Identities Catalog

PIC – the Photographers’ Identities Catalog. Sadly my Web browser wasn’t deemed worthy enough to enter, but yours may have better luck. “Photographers’ Identities Catalog (PIC) is an experimental interface to a collection of biographical data describing photographers, studios, manufacturers, and others involved in the production of photographic images. Consisting of names, nationalities, dates, locations […]

Harvard’s library of rare colours

Harvard has a special collection of “rare colours”, the Forbes Pigment Collection… “a floor-to-ceiling wall of color compiled between about 1910 and 1944 by the director of the Fogg Art Museum.”

The new White Paper on Culture

The government’s new Culture White Paper has just been published. Here’s my quick summary of points which seem relevant to the West Midlands, and which were not raised in the recent budget speech… * “A new cultural citizens programme [to] be led by Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund [which] will reach across […]

Mind the gap…

Google Street View now has the first full UK walking trail online, in 360-degree walkable form. It’s the ancient North Downs Way, stretching 153 miles from Farnham — Canterbury — the White Cliffs of Dover. Next up is the Cleveland Way, and the rest of the UK’s main long-distance National Trails are scheduled to go […]

Budget round-up for creatives

A round-up some of the key points from today’s Budget speech in Parliament, likely to be of interest to creatives and small businesses… * There will be tax-breaks for museums and galleries which devise and tour major new touring exhibitions. No details, but presumably it will work in the same way as existing help for […]

Needless Alley

Birmingham Conservation Trust has a short blog post today on one of my favorite Birmingham places, Needless Alley… “This little passage way is a survivor from old Birmingham that has managed to escape the urban planners!” It has only escaped the council planners, in the sense that it hasn’t been stopped up. But its unique […]

Banking on Brum

Super! Not only is HSBC staying in the UK, it’s moving 1,000 jobs from London to Birmingham city centre.

BBC iPlayer and the TV licence fee

A forthcoming new law will mean that “Those who watch catch-up BBC iPlayer on tablets will be forced to pay [the TV] licence fee”… “One option being considered is to make users sign in with a password linked in with a television licence before they can watch live or catch-up programmes.” Well, that’s up to […]

Looking for an alternative to Scoop.it

Well, the new update for Scoop.it has killed Scoop.it for me. The new posting form just never loads in Firefox — and I have AdBlock and NoScript disabled at Scoop.it. The old Scoop.it browser bookmarklet has never worked for me in Firefox, so I can’t use that either. In the Google Chrome browser, the Scoop.it […]

State magazine

State magazine, a new Birmingham magazine for… “insight into the lives of creative individuals within the music industry”

Social Media in an English Village

A new open ebook, based on detailed grassroots research, “Social Media in an English Village”… “Daniel Miller spent 18 months undertaking an ethnographic study with the residents of an English village [less than one hour from Central London by train, so perhaps not that typical…], tracking their use of the different social media platforms. […] […]

UK banks – no longer such pals with PayPal?

Are the UK banks no longer co-operating with PayPal like they once did? The message on transferring some PayPal balance to my bank is now: “Please allow 0-3 working days for processing.”, whereas previously the message was about how the transferred money might take up to three hours to appear in the bank account.